killer in barksdale A student, brutally murdered on the second day at the University of Barksdale. Reason enough for Spencer Gore to form a team with the sports student Sara Choi and to look around the contemplative campus. Two days later there is the next murder. The detective duo is supported by one of the local police's best noses, the inscrutable Nawat, who is said to have a 98 percent sucess rate. But all suspects have a solid alibi. And no one seems to be the guy who cuts people's throat and watches them bleeding to death, or strangles them. The case is not clear. In addition, Sara has something to hide. The series of killings panics the dean. A savvy sadist threatens students' lives. And that on the second day after the semester break.
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KILLER IN BARKSDALE
1
Shufang was a skinny, pale Asian girl. Her black eyes were in a friendly face with a round chin and pronounced cheekbones. Her head, a U with pointed end, was mounted on the strong neck. She spoke as if she mean herself and not whoever hear her words. And with eyes made of black matter, she looked at you. What gave the impression what she really thought, she kept it quiet. She was tough, and well-developed muscles moved under smooth skin. Her small breasts fits her physique and were not something that immediately caught the eye. She had strong legs, arms and delicate hands. Her hair was black and chestnut red when the sunbeams broke at them. She had a nice mouth, with full, red lips. Small, white teeth glow when she cursed or bit her lips. Shufang is Chinese and means study room and that's what she did here. The University of Barksdale was founded in 1911 at a time when land was dirt cheap, wrestling was a popular sport and one knew nothing about efficient Street planning. The faculty buildings were scattered across the 500-acre campus. Like a fairy tale, they were hidden behind high hedges and in the shade of old trees. Just before the lanterns went out and the dense fog crawled across the floor between the logs, the whole area had something enchanted. Between five and six o'clock, when the snow owls sing to the moon, The boars were asleep in the wild parts of the park, you did not see anything alive except Jogger. Thirty sports scholarship students were running over the Gomery baseball field at this time of night, and there was always an assistant with a stopwatch in his hand at the finish line.
Seen from below, the terrain was a forest cut from roads and paths and nothing special. If you looked at it from a bird's-eye view, the whole genius of the landscape architect flashed on you. Barksdale Drive, where the apartment blocks and key locations were located, resembled a tree trunk. The gently curved paths and roads were twigs and branches. The buildings reminded one of hanging fruits. But it took a while to appreciate the original wilderness. For the freshman, it was like a scavenger hunt, to orientate themselves here. If they wanted to go from one lecture to the next and did not run into a local guide.
Barksdale was a forest, a place without a geographical center. Thanks to the countless spruces, cedars and pines, the name of the university not only appeared in the sport, but also local news. Whenever they were uprooted in the storm, branches fell on cars and firefighters and paramedics had to move in to clear the streets.
How fast time flies! March, again. Just like a year ago and before. The trees have taken their medicine for hair loss, a little warmth and lots of yellow sunlight. Buds sprouted and the flowers in the beds began to turn towards the sun. Students sat on cardigans and sweaters on the lawn or seized the benches flanking the roadside with themselves and their books, pretending it's not cold. The starlings and sandpipers returned from vacation on time for the start of the semester and gave the ravens' company. Except for the poor creatures who were trapped in nets in Europe and already eaten. In the forest between Eaton Hall, the Administration, and Truman Weston Justice Center, Three wild boar kids were looking for food with their mother. Only in the evening they throw the garbage cans, in the nice residential streets of the campus. During the day they just tear out the roots and make the place to a desert. Even members of Peta admitted it was too much. Sara's best friend, Wyonna Santiago from the Student Council, had been collecting signatures for weeks. She wanted to locate a pair of Canadian Gray Wolves in Barksdale, who solved the problem in a natural way. She was a lovely girl, and everyone liked doing her a favor. But watching howling wolves rushing their prey across the campus and then tearing them to pieces went too far. There was Doctor Decker's hobby of slaughtering pigs and deer on campus and providing the game meat in the churches and homeless shelters a good alternative. She refused her hobby for months because of the protests. She strikes and feels satisfaction when an animal has attacked a student. Decker says, “I knew it” and looks a little to satisfied. Due to Decker strike the stupid pigs have lost any fear of humans. Maybe the idea with the wolves is not bad?
Sara stood in front of a park bench. Gray pigeons that never fly anywhere unless someone ties a letter around their legs, waiting beside the trash cans along the way. Shufang Choi, the world called her Sara, because her first name sounded too much like a Disney movie, watched them. A mentally retarded animal had been chopping on a soda can for several minutes, trying to eat it. The question automatically comes up. Does poisonous color taste good and do pigeons get high? Elephants get intoxicated when given the opportunity. Even majestic jaguars eat mushrooms and spend hours in another world. What do cats hallucinate? Wings and floating above the jungle? Dream pigeons of being smarter! Another fool of the species tried to eat a big rock. Only her extreme reproductive instincts guarantee that the species survived. It was just a bird, but he should have known better. If you were intoxicated, cement would be banned and sold per ounce. It was a question for Misses Brown. Biology was her job and ornithology her only hobby. Often she lurked in the evening in camouflage clothes, and in the most unlikely places with the binoculars in front of the eyes on a rare bird and frightened the students to death. The birds bore names such as cow dung, sheep scarecrow or spoon finder and were inconspicuous, could not sing and had nothing to do with cows, sheep or spoons. In addition to her love for spying on Midwestern birds, she liked to disguise herself. One day she gave her lectures, such as an English country lady, headscarf in green trousers and tweed jacket, and marched in rubber boots on the podium. Sometimes she preferred the look of a pharaoh. Saris, turbans and jiggling gold jewelry on arms and feet. Sara looked away, she needed a break, the stupid animals started to make her angry. They aroused primeval urges, Sara wanted to kick them like a football. Students and teachers cycled past her. Some wore helmets, most did not. Some smiled, but the vast majority did not. Faces as if they were doing the tour de France. Although everything was as it always was, just a tad more shabby than last year, Sara sat back and floated over Vasser Street past the baseball field toward Roosevelt Way. A person does not need the world to be ecstatic, but she had a good reason to be in a good mood, which was reflected positively in her appearance.
She was so tall that she was small but not tiny even though she was on the border. Sara's black hair was not very short, not like in the new shampoo commercials. It reached to her shoulders and was a pure compromise between beauty and the demands of the sport. No one tries to force the opponent with both shoulders on the mat when the hair was under him and was torn out in tufts. The one and a half decades of training in a notorious Beijinger athlete's forge
had prevented her having to fight with too many kilos. She was lean and tough, like a tractor tire. The tires that burn for weeks on the garbage dump. What gave her heart-shaped face charm was black eyes when she took off her glasses, at least. With her naive, black eyes behind glasses she appeared, that representatives of obscure financial institutions tried to give her a student loan. At each campus festival, Hare Krishna and Jehovah's Witnesses rushed for a conversation about God on Sara. She smiles, says “no, thank you, you are to be envied, you believe in god, despite the shit that happens around us, if he exists, he will not help, or he can not help, which means he is not all-powerful.”
Contrary to first appearance she had a very sharp mind, often she was just distracted, which is why she sometimes seemed naive. Sara's mind was screwed together on one of the university's academic production lines. She was interested in motivation and with a sports science diploma from Barksdale, the doors in China were wide open. She could teach at a university or find work in one of the schools of the Ministry of Sport, Kaderschmiede is the most appropriate German word. Sara came from the Richards lab, where thirteen rats in wheels create the electricity that shocks themselves if they do not travel a certain distance in a given time. In Sarah's experiment, pain is the motivation. The experimental animals (colony A) were physically healthy, but suffered from extreme stress symptoms. There is a reason why top athletes like Neanderthals had a limited life expectancy. Now she was thinking about repeating the whole experiment with pigeons.
A regulation ordered the rats to be killed after a series of tests. For the animals of colony A presumption probably. She knew three students who had brought their boa constrictors and kept the animals in the dorm in terrariums. In contrast to the appearance, she had the figure of a figure skater, she came back two days ago with gold of the Universiade in freestyle wrestling up to 52 kilograms. That's why she looked like she wanted to hug the world. Because Barksdale was chronically short of money, she was given a bungalow for the victory.
It was a tradition and as old as the university. A 1-story sloping roofed house, covered with red shingles and an “L” shaped, wide veranda on the Roosevelt Way. It faced the house from the Dean, which was a pretty sight. It had square flower boxes in front of the blue lattice windows on the first floor where Maria Brown planted vegetables and kitchen herbs. She was in the fast lane and the immense amount of training before the student Olympics had paid off. From now on there are no long queues, in front of the only bathroom with a tub on the sixth floor of the Elizabeth Warren residences. You had to put your name in a long list on the door, if you wanted hot water in the bathtub.
. She lived in one of six aging brick towers near the campus entrance. Sarah's new home was a bungalow in an idyllic street full of brightly painted brick houses with gardens. The 5th Avenue of Barksdale. In which Dean, professors and staff of the University lived secluded from students and the outside world. Living here was a luxury allowed only the genius Andy Lau and the two best athletes. Barksdale did not do much on academic dance floors, but in sports and wrestling it was a power. Seven of the last ten wrestling US champions were made in Barksdale. Sara Choi did not wear a tracksuit, black shorts, green T-shirt to celebrate her move, and she had braided her shoulder-length black hair with blue office gum to two braids. Braids that stood out like antennas and emphasized their small protruding ears. She would have dressed better, but the two washing machines in the spooky cellar had been broken for weeks and you had to scrub everything by hand.
She danced humming around a gentle curve, past chest-high hedges and bushes and stopped, as if she had hit a glass wall. In front of Sara's house number 13 parked a moving van labeled Breedle & Neatt. Workers carried in boxes. Not her things, because her entire belongings were in two tightly packed suitcases with the house manager of the dorm. She blinked and jumped immediately with the feeling that her house was in flames up the stairs. As fast as lightning she took off her shoes on the porch and walked barefoot into the house. Unable to formulate an explanation, she looked around. The room was sparsely furnished and that would not change after Sarah's move. On the wall of the window was a long, blue leather sofa with a side table topped by a lava lamp. In front of the sofa, a coffee table with two outstretched legs covered in jeans, magazines and an empty pizza box. A creeping cold was in the air and seemed to come from the sofa. The milky sun conjured faint reddish patterns through the half-closed checkered blinds to the wall. The incident light and the unaccustomed doing of the workers colored the room into a theater setting. Romantic comedies started this way or serial killer movies, she was still undecided. Moving crates piled up on the wall of the open kitchen. From Bluetooth boxes on the windowsill came Hip Hop music, and not the good ones. It sounded like what a crazy cop on LSD would dream. Shots, screams and sirens and a rapper with the voice of a lisping young boy. On the antique wing chair next to the sofa, boxes were packed with brand-new shoes. Three withered potted plants on the white kitchen island silently begged for water. She promised it, as soon as it was done here. Of course there was an explanation, maybe the intruder did not know Arabic numbers and was wrong about the house? How dumb can someone be?
She had to admit the burglar, was not ugly. His soul was thoroughly ruined, but he did not look that way. Broad shoulders, cute snub nose and dimples in the cheeks. He looked like a blond John Atkinson Grimshaw painted youth or Dorian Gray in the Hammer movie of 1945, English somehow. Maybe because he was blond, with the hairstyle of a poet from the 19th century. He wore a white and too tight T-shirt, which was supposed to emphasize his chest muscles. His jeans were at least three sizes too big and the edge of his Gucci boxer shorts looked out of his waistband. Accessories can ruin an impression. Around his right wrist he wore a swanky clock that looked as if he had been a pimp during the semester break. If he had really bought the Clock, she was so tasteless that her eyes burned. Why did he not tie a thick gold bar around his neck? He was six feet tall, presumably because she could not fumble in the boxes and look for a tape measure and measure him. He was athletic-built, too muscular for a marathon runner, but Sara could picture him on the rowing bench of a boat. A slave galley where thieves belong. Barksdale did not have a rowing team! It was founded too late to own slaves like Columbia, Princeton, and Harvard, and to benefit from trafficking, so there was no galley. Her university was known for uprooted trees, wrestlers and the only savant without autism Andy Lau. A golf bag with clubs was in the hallway, which did not explain his broad shoulders. Golf was a sport of unsympathetic old men, and he was not older than 20.
“Sorry Miss,” said a well-built worker in green dungarees and the voice of a baritone, and she jumped to one side. The worker looked at the house thief, who seized other people's apartments and made himself comfortable on her couch. Without looking, the thief said, "Put it away somewhere I do not stumble over it." He hung his pretty face down over his book. The worker parked his cargo where it is guaranteed to stumble, across the hall, and went out to retrieve another box from the truck.
The thief wore Nike Jordan’s in the house and those dirty manners hurt her physically. She flinched, thinking of the bacteria, viruses, and germs he passed over the stained wooden floor at every step. If God, Sara would give the decision, which peoples he should wipe from the face of the earth, she would suggest to him, instead, to wash away all the people who kept street shoes in the house. She took a breath and thought of something beautiful. She would be awakened early in the morning, at first sunshine, by cheerful birdsong and not by the flushing of a neighbor's toilet, the noise of vomiting, when he comes home rolling drunk. Sara would soon get a sun chair at IKEA and, as soon as the weather allowed, she would sunbathe on the porch. Sunhat, sunglasses reading a book like a lady, like Doris Day. But first his mistake had to be cleared up. It was her house, and she had no intention of sharing it. Especially not with a man who kept his shoes in her house. He sat his long legs outstretched on the coffee table with his blond curly hair and emerald eyes in the room, absorbed in his book. American literature for dummies, Safe and successful,
Through the first and second semester, was the title. The loud coming and going of the movers who stomped through the house, like bison across the prairie, he ignored aristocratic-ignorant. This lack of interest in anything but himself was innate, genetic. He was one of the people born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he knew problems from TV documentaries and YouTube clips. "Hmm," Sara cleared her throat, "Hmm!" Louder the second time.
He did not even look up from the book. "Clean up when everything is unpacked. If you want to be useful, make me coffee and the workers sandwiches. "
"I'm not from the cleaning service," she answered in a voice that could cut old bread. Angered redness spread on her cheeks, her ears felt much warmer.
“No, what do you want?" He turned to her. "Oh!" His eyes wandered from her hairline over her bosom to the white-tape-wrapped toes. His eyes were neither warm nor flattering. He looked at her like a butcher calculating how many steaks he gets from the ox. He stroked his hair back and gave her a short nod. He opened his mouth to a smile that was as real as a seventy-dollar bill. Only regular bleaching at the dentist gets the whiteness of his teeth. "If you want to say hello to me, drop the homemade cake somewhere and come back in the evening. There are three bottles of red wine in a carton, not the cheap stuff you usually drink. "
"I'm not drinking, and I'm sure I did not come to bring you some cake," the words sputtered furiously out of her.
"No?" He blinked, looking as though he were awake in pajamas and a pillow under his arm in the middle of the street, wondering where he was going. He could only remember how he had gone to sleep.
She forced herself not to sound like a witch and calm the anger. She took a deep breath and managed a half smile. "I came to ask you to take your things and leave. You have unfortunately made a mistake because that is my house! «
His interest went out, as if he could turn curiosity on and off with a switch. "It's not yours anymore, because I wanted it." He focused on his book again, though he moved his lips as if reading was brand new to him.
"You need it?" Sara repeated in disbelief.
"Yes I need it! You will not expect me to move into one of these dormitories as if I have no money? " He said without looking at her, which made her even more angry than his trying to paint her in thought without clothes.
"I do not care where you go, if it's not my house. The dean promised me. "
"And then I needed it. If you do not mind, I'll have to concentrate. "He shook her off with a wave of his hand and, lost in thought, spun a curl around his forefinger. "What's an epitope?" He asked softly.
"You do not look like you know anything about DNA. You mean epilogue. " She told him through the flower he was stupid. He did not hear the language of the flowers. When he starts reading, he could not do that between the lines.
"Yes, I know," he roared after hearing the undertone.
"I'm talking to the Dean and ...."
"Do that," he said, waving her away with his left hand like a servant.
"I'll be back with the campus police."
"Epilogue, does that bitch think I've never heard that?" He mumbled, glaring at her. To his surprise, she seemed calm and gave him just a look, as if she saw the contents of the wastebasket in a station toilet. Before she really hurt the guy, she turned and rushed away.
"Who do you think you are? I know the word!" He shouted after her.
"Is that why you read like an illiterate?"
One of the movers came up the stairs and nodded to her companionably. She put on her shoes on the porch and marched in the direction of Groover Hall to the headquarters of the administration building. Three piglets with their mother rushed out of the hole they had dug into the ground to reach a root. Sara took a shortcut off the road through thick bushes and no pig with a self-preservation instinct got in her way. She stopped at the entrance to the administration and gasped. Why did university founders think buildings on a campus must look like aristocratic seats and be adorned with a marble frieze of Greek gods? What did the Titan Atlas have to do with the administration of a university? Did Mister Barksdale seriously believe that students are carrying the earth on their shoulders? Middle management left Barksdale's gates and no future Nobel Peace Prize laureate, unless there is a Nobel prize for wrestling or volleyball.
She started moving, driven by anger and ran up the stairs.
2
She did not knock, though she tried to follow the rules of courtesy, forgetting it this time. Dean Brown's wife Maria did not care. She was busy repairing the printer and sat with the disassembled machine at the reception desk in the antechamber, staring with the screwdriver in her hand, strange parts scattered everywhere on the tabletop, making no sense. She looked like a brooding bird of prey guarding his nest. Maria was a lady of 51 who looked twenty years younger. Her purple hair, she wore cut short, which did not match the Arab wrap dress that was smeared with ink at the daring neckline and wide sleeves. Her face was narrow, with prominent cheekbones, and was dominated by stunning blue eyes and a slightly curved nose. "Maria, with Alibaba Express, printers are almost free," Sara said. That had been the first culture shock. At all American universities, the teaching staff insisted that they be addressed by their first name. "You order a printer and get a second one for free." Sara just know that after assembling something loose in the printer would rattle, and he refused to function despite opening and closing.
"Chester's secretary called earlier and called in sick. She said it's something with the printer too. No problem, as soon as I feel it, it's like new. Oh! yes, child. I'm supposed to tell you he's not there. But Chester is inside, he has a guest. Go in quietly. It does not seem to be important anyway, they've been silent for ten minutes. "
"Thanks." Sara took off her shoes and set them neatly beside the riffle-glass door. Dean Brown was written in black letters. She opened without knocking.
You can not prevent a room from communicating with the visitor unless it is empty and freshly painted, and all said: EDUCATION!
There were tons of books in the bookshelf and not a single one was unread. An FC Tottenham fan scarf hung spread out over the windows. Framed diplomas and awards hung on the wall, and in between were her and Andy Lau's portraits. Sara Choi with a sweaty, haggard face and a shaggy haircut in a Ringer jersey and a gold medal around her neck on the podium. Dean Brown in a gray suit with a pipe in the corner of his mouth stood beside her, handing out flowers. In the picture she was androgynous and it was hard to tell if she was male or female. There were not many famous students in Barksdale, and the home of the university was famed for cheese alone, so Brown pretty much put everything on his walls. On the other hung originals of the photographer Gerald Cyrus. They're already there, before the work of African-American photographers in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles was fashionable, and a photo of him cost $15,000. He had smuggled his own work between Gerald Cyrus. The black and white photography of boring motifs was his leisure time pleasure. Often he accompanied his wife with a night vision camera on their ornithological excursions. Historian Chester Willson Brown had been fortunate in the '80s and was made dean for his way of speaking that no one understood his political views. He was always philosophical, and he did that when he was in the bathroom or tooth brushing. His wife was a Marxist, and he was a liberal Republican, meaning that they could never decide who to vote for. The man had released generations of psychologists, chemists, biologists and lawyers on humanity, he appreciated a cup of tea and his peace of mind more than the discovery of X-rays. He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of his desk, face to door. His eyes tight shut, his lips slightly opened, as if he wanted to say something. Administrative work was piling up on his desk. Invoices, files and letters, because he did not read e-mails, was only wondering where the India Viagra sellers knew his address. Most of his spam emails came from there. Maybe they thought he wanted to give his genes to as many offspring as possible. America would not be harmed, as long as it could not be ruined by boring photos. "I meditate," he said without opening his eyes, "otherwise I would have flinched when you stormed into the room. It's really hard to find your own center when the door opens and closes constantly. "
Brown finally opened his eyes and looked at the other intruder, who sat relaxed in the visitor's chair and looked at his cell phone and laughed softly. Brown's other visitor turned his head and nodded to Sara. "Dave Chappelle, the Netflix Special," he explained.
"Aha." She sounded uninterested, though she wondered what he wanted here. Men under thirty did not visit Brown very often, so she considered him a representative of a book publisher. The guest was over six feet tall and his broad shoulders gave him the healthy appearance of a man who regularly lifts weights. Not too much, not too little, he had put the dumbbells out in time. His face was oval, his widest part was the cheekbones that protruded. Long, black eyelashes bordered with clever-looking, girlish brown eyes. He had a straight nose and a mouth with full lips. His forehead was high and his eyebrows were mockingly raised as his eyes fell on Sara's bandaged toes. She looked at Brown and her clenched fists opened. She did not look like she was about to pick someone up in the guillotine choke and pull him up until his eyes popped out and rolled over the floor. Brown sucked aggression out of people, and that was because of his self-made accent, which he had adapted to thinking too much. It was one that was only spoken in the ivory towers of the scholarly world and only his peers could totally understand him. The Dean of Barksdale was a gentleman with a white mustache, blue eyes and a fine wreath of silver-gray hair from one ear to the other. His head looked like Table Mountain, where the snow does not make it to the top. He also wore his gray tweed suit with leather patches on the elbow and a red bow tie while meditating.
"There's a stranger in my bungalow!" She said directly.
Brown's bushy eyebrows rose by a millimeter, expressing his interest.
"Yes, a stranger. He claims the nonsense it is his now. "
"Then it must be Luke Richard, right?"\
She was startled. "I did not ask the burglar for his name, do you think the police want me to know that?"
"I'm assuming that's him." Before she could say anything, he said, "Unfortunately, we rely on money ... nonsensical amount of money." He sighed. "Did you know that the first bills in the Song Dynasty were circulated in the 10th century? In remote places in Britain, copper ingots were used until the 15th century. «
"Really? My great-grandfather came from Northern Ireland and that's basically the same thing, "the visitor said.
"Why not hard-to-transport copper ingots? Colorful parrot feathers, as in Amazonian and Papua did not exist. It is written in Caesar's book of the Gallic War; in Britain there are tattooed and very warlike barbarians from head to toe. No word of especially beautiful birds. If so, the Roman upper classes would have eaten the whole species, and their recipes for cooking would have been preserved as archaeological evidence. "
"Still, it's not very clever," the visitor said, confessing, "But I did not read the book."
Sara could not be distracted, which was easier thought than done. She could feel some of her thoughts scurrying about the sparse knowledge of the Gallic war and the other part thinking of the English fauna. Great Woodpeckers were beautiful and existed in England. Seagulls were attractive birds and they were abundant. "My house," she squeezed out before she drowned in the vortex of thought.
"Yes," said Brown sadly, "it's true."
"No!" Said Sara, shaking her head.
Brown nodded. "Unfortunately!"
"But why?"
"I had to give it to him."
"Because he wanted it," the guest intervened.
Sara sent a venomous look in his direction and looked back at Brown. "That's why?"
"Yes, because Barksdale relies on stupid money, as I told you."
"I do not understand, what does that have to do with my house, or did you sell it?"
"Maybe Richard's scholarship, Richard's library, and the Richards lab will tell you something. Luke Richards father is one of our patrons, and we are indebted to him. He wanted us to keep his son safe until grass grew over it. "
"He always does, he pays the interest if a university names something after him. In Yale, the visitor toilets are named after him, " the guest explained. "It's Yale, but I do not know if that's such a great honor. Seems to me, Yale has made him a fool and tied it to his nose. "
»Keep safe? In my house, of all places? "Sara asked. She'd been training like a lunatic for the past six months. She had to attach for a year because she had not had time to start the topic of punishment and motivation as a dissertation because of the training for the Universade.
